Protofire Contributes to Mission Control — The Graph’s Incentivized Testnet
Mission Control enables participants to make improvements to The Graph before it launches to the mainnet.
Complexities behind DApp development
Blockchain has, undoubtedly, been one of the most important and innovative technological advances of the last decade. Beginning with Bitcoin, each major network added something new and exciting to blockchain. In particular, Ethereum stands out thanks to its capability to run Turing-complete code on the blockchain nodes. This created new ways of using a blockchain network apart from the usual trading of cryptocurrency. Ethereum also opened the possibility for users to create sophisticated pieces of software that run within the “world computer.” This led to new ways of building technological products that were not bound by the traditional concept of centralization, but a new decentralized method of operation.
Unfortunately, decentralization comes with a cost. Creating applications that consume blockchain data is not trivial. You have to interact with a network node, understand the underlying concepts of the blockchain (blocks, transactions, logs, etc.), and then extract the necessary data. Given the nature of the technology, to use the data you may need to iterate over all of the transactions present in the blockchain network. In comparison, a centralized application that uses APIs to retrieve data would only require a few HTTP requests to replicate the processes mentioned above.
To simplify the development of blockchain-based applications, The Graph created a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data on Ethereum and the Interplanetary File System. With The Graph, developers can browse through open APIs, known as subgraphs, and query blockchain data to power their applications in a simple and fast manner. The Graph also makes it easier for developers to create APIs for web3 protocols (like Uniswap, Synthetic, etc.) and then publish them.
Back in July, The Graph launched Mission Control, an incentivized testnet where participants can operate nodes and make improvements ahead of The Graph’s mainnet launch.
What is Mission Control?
Once The Graph launches on the mainnet, anyone can run a node to provide indexing services to the network. In The Graph’s ecosystem, there are two major roles: Indexers and Curators.
Indexers are responsible for operating Graph Nodes and staking Graph Tokens (GRT) to index blockchain data. Indexers can earn fees from queries and they can also gain GRT rewards for indexing. Meanwhile, Curators are responsible for signaling which subgraphs are high-quality and should be indexed. Similar to Indexers, Curators can earn fees from the subgraphs they signalled.
Mission Control is an initiative to create a testnet where Indexers can contribute and make improvements to the network before The Graph launches to the mainnet.
For the past two and a half years, the team behind The Graph have been working with blockchain developers to improve subgraph features, harden Graph Node, scale the hosted service, as well as pave the way forward for the decentralized network. Now, with Mission Control, the network is ready to be decentralized and tested with real query volume.
Mission Control is split into five phases:
- running an Indexer
- staking, basic actions, and customizations
- honest profit maximization
- network stress test
- rational profit maximization
Each phase has technical missions, where the performance of each Indexer dictates how much of the native GRT they will be rewarded. Later on, a bounty program for reporting vulnerabilities will be added.
By participating in Mission Control, Indexers can learn more about subgraphs and The Graph’s protocol design. Additionally, they can help to refine economic parameters in the network, which will later define query dynamics and incentives.
Throughout the testnet, rewards are allocated to the top teams in various performance metrics, such as query volume, profit maximization, data sharing, and feedback. Up to 3% of the total GRT supply will be rewarded to Indexers and another 3% to Curators.
How Protofire contributes to Mission Control
Protofire is a team of engineers that helps decentralized protocols and developer platforms to accelerate growth of their ecosystems. By delivering hands-on coding and contributions, Protofire specializes in supercharging developer adoption and network usage.
For over a year, Protofire has been collaborating with The Graph to create different public subgraphs for important projects like Gnosis, Maker, Augur, Opyn, Instadapp, UMA, Kyber, Synthetix, etc. To date, our team of engineers has developed more than 20 subgraphs, implementing them in different dashboards, DApps, and explorers. Some of those successful projects are Opyn, Maker Governance, and Synthetix GrantsDAO.
We believe that The Graph can help to pave the way for the mainstream adoption of web3. Through The Graph, developers who are not familiar with web3 can still integrate the technology to their workflow, creating decentralized applications with ease.
Protofire supports The Graph, and we are committed in increasing our effort and involvement in the ecosystem. We are running our own Indexer node and are also participating as Curators to help identify mature subgraphs to boost their usability. Furthermore, our engineers are contributing to public chats, workshops, and webinars, as well as creating tutorials.
Mission Control requires a lot of hard work and dedication, and, thankfully, there is a whole community of Indexers working extra hard to make this possible. We are amazed at the level of collaboration shown in the testnet. Indexers are helping each other to solve issues, improving and completing their corresponding missions to continue their path along the testnet.
With Mission Control, the community can improve The Graph by polishing features, ironing out bugs, and creating documentation.
About The Graph
The Graph is the indexing and query layer of the decentralized web. Developers build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL. There is a hosted service in production that makes it simple for developers to start building on The Graph, and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS, and PoA with more networks coming soon. To date, over 2,300 subgraphs have been deployed by thousands of developers for applications, such as Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, AAVE, Decentraland, and many others.
If you are a developer building an application or Web3 application, you can use subgraphs for indexing and querying data from blockchains. The Graph allows applications to efficiently and performantly present data in a UI and allows other developers to use your subgraph too! You can deploy a subgraph or query existing subgraphs that are in the Graph Explorer. Join our community by introducing yourself in our Discord for technical discussions, join our Telegram chat, or follow us on Twitter! Our developers are always eager to chat with you, and The Graph ecosystem has a growing community of developers who support each other.
